HIV Co-Discoverer Goes to Court Over Rights to Potential Cure

Nobel Prize–winning French researcher Luc Montagnier—credited as co-discovering HIV —is being accused of stealing the intellectual property rights to a revolutionary electromagnetic technique that may be used to combat HIV and other diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, The Daily Telegraph reports.

According to the article, Montagnier is engaged in a legal battle with inventor Bruno Robert, who approached him in May 2005 with his work on electromagnetic waves. The following November, Robert registered a patent for a process that would pinpoint illnesses by their electromagnetic signature and potentially block or neutralize them with an opposing signal. A month later, Montagnier requested a patent for the exact biochemical process. The case went to court March 3.

Robert’s lawyer alleges that Montagnier has already admitted that he did not come up with the discovery, adding that the virologist had signed a contract to use Robert’s electromagnetic technique in 2005 in exchange for an annual payment of 100,000 euros per year over a five-year period. Robert says he received no such payment. Montagnier’s lawyer affirms that his client had only signed a “protocol agreement,” which is not legally binding.